Tonight we had a weather delay for our flight.

I am glad that we were sitting on the ground as the line of thunderstorms roared through the airport.

We had boarded the flight and it looked nice and calm outside. However, I was pretty sure that we would be sitting at the gate for some time based on the radar images I was seeing on my phone.

There was a long line of thunderstorms stretching from Oklahoma all the way up into Iowa and it was moving slowly eastward.

However, we boarded on time and the door was shut all ready for an on-time departure.

The door was barely shut when the pilot announced that there were thunderstorms in the area and that we may have a small wait.

A few more minutes and the announcement came that the airport would be shut down until the thunderstorms had passed.

You can see by the image above that there was a very intense cell just north of us.

Very soon my view out the window was very different. Unfortunately my camera was focusing on the rain drops on the window. My actual view was rain that was going almost horizontal with the heavy winds that were blowing through the airport. Oh, and luggage carts that were being pushed around by the wind.

One wind gust was clocked at 67 mph. The plane was rocking and it felt like we were going through some turbulence even though we were on the ground.

Here you can see another view of the line of thunderstorms as they were passing over the airport.

Many of the passengers had weather apps and you could hear them going off as tornado warnings were issued. However, the tornado warning box did not include the airport. If so, we would have had to deplane and head underground.

My sister who lives near the airport and had dropped me off was in her basement since tornado warning sirens were going off. She was keeping me updated with the news, which included the information about the 67 mph wind and also that a semi had overturned on the Interstate near the airport.

About an hour after our scheduled departure time we were finally in the air and headed toward California. I arrived home after midnight and am getting everything ready for packing for a flight tonight to Singapore. The flight will be a bit longer 🙂

Steven

This post initially only had the first few sentences and image and was posted from my phone from the plane when we landed at SFO. I revised it once I made it home.